Overview
- California wildlife officials confirmed a 3-year-old gray wolf was detected around 6 a.m. Saturday in the mountains north of Santa Clarita, the county’s first confirmed wolf in at least 100 years.
- The animal, known as BEY03F, was born in 2023 in Plumas County’s Beyem Seyo Pack and has traveled hundreds of miles south across the Sierra Nevada.
- BEY03F was fitted with a GPS collar in May while in Tulare County and is now dispersing during breeding season, which officials say suggests she is searching for a mate.
- Officials describe the sighting as the furthest south a wolf has been documented in California in the modern tracking era, with an estimated statewide population of at least 60 wolves.
- Biologists warn that vehicle strikes are the leading known cause of wolf deaths in California, noting a prior traveler, OR-93, was killed by a car in 2021 after reaching Southern California.